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NASA chooses next rover landing spot in search for life on Mars

On ancient Mars, water carved channels and transported sediments to form fans and deltas within lake basins. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL

NASA has decided to send its next Mars rover to Jezero Crater to search for life, after after considering more than 60 other possible locations, the agency announced Monday.

The big picture: The next mission to the Red Planet will launch in July 2020. The rover will look for signs of past habitable conditions and will collect and store rock and soil samples. Future Mars exploration missions could retrieve those samples for analysis. “Getting samples from this unique area will revolutionize how we think about Mars and its ability to harbor life,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement.

Where is it: Jezero Crater, which is believed to have once been a lake-delta system, is on the western edge of the Isidis Planitia basin to the north of the Martian equator, according to a NASA press release. Mission scientists hope to find ancient organic molecules and other science of microbial life preserved in the different kinds of rock and sediments there.

The challenge: The diversity of the terrain in this spot on Mars brings with it a challenge for the entry, descent and landing (EDL) engineers to ensure that the rover does not get trapped in sand or among the boulders and rocks.

“But what was once out of reach is now conceivable, thanks to the 2020 engineering team and advances in Mars entry, descent and landing technologies.”

Podcast: Facebook's crisis of confidence

Dan is joined by New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac, to discuss Facebook's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

"Mark Zuckerberg reportedly referred to a lot of the criticism, particularly on the idea it misled people, as 'bullshit' during an employee call late last week, but here’s what’s very real. The talk of Zuckerberg running for president, or Sheryl Sandberg returning to D.C. in a Democratic administration, is over. Now it’s all about if they deserve to keep running one of the world’s most powerful companies."

Tim Cook defends taking billions from Google

Apple CEO Tim Cook being interviewed on "Axios on HBO"

If Apple is so big on users' privacy, why does the company take billions of dollars from Google in exchange for letting the search giant be the default search engine on iPhones, iPads and Macs? It's a question that has been on my mind a lot amid the raging debate over how much control individuals should have over their data.

Why it matters: Apple likes to make the case that while most of the Big Tech companies make money from selling your information, it makes money from selling you products. But it also gets a lot of money from Google, which only pays that amount because it makes more than that from Apple's customers.

"One, I think their search engine is the best. ... But, two, look at what we've done with the controls we've built in. We have private web browsing. We have an intelligent tracker prevention. What we've tried to do is come up with ways to help our users through their course of the day. It's not a perfect thing. I'd be the very first person to say that. But it goes a long way to helping."

— Tim Cook

Between the lines: Cook is pointing to a range of things Apple has done to limit how much information Google or any other web giant can collect on Apple users. It also offers users alternatives to Google for search, as long as they are willing to look deep in the device's settings.

If you go to the settings menu and select the Safari browser app, you can choose among Google, Bing, Yahoo and the privacy-centric, but lesser-known, DuckDuckGo.

Cook still uses his phone several hours a day even after he started tracking his usage with Screen Time. But, he said, "My notifications are declining, the number of times I pick up a device are declining and the only reason they are is because we built this functionality into our operating system and I now know what I was doing. "

Cook gets up a little before 4 am. "I like to take the first hour and go through user comments and things like this that sort of focus on the external people that are so important to us. And then I go to the gym and work out for an hour because it keeps my stress at bay."

When it comes to regulation, Cook said he prefers to let the free market iron things out. "But we have to admit when the free market is not working. And it hasn't worked here. And I think it's inevitable that there will be some level of regulation."